SENDAI (Miyagi Pref.): Tohoku Electric Power Co. said Friday that a reactor at its Onagawa nuclear plant in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, has resumed power generation for the first time since the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011.
The Onagawa No. 2 reactor restarted power generation at 6 p.m. Friday. After an adjustment operation to check its operating condition while gradually increasing output, the reactor will be temporarily halted for equipment checks. It is expected to start full commercial operation in December.
The 825,000-kilowatt reactor, if operated at about 70 pct of its capacity for one year, is estimated to generate electricity equivalent to the power consumption of 1.62 million households, according to Tohoku Electric.
The reactor was reactivated on Oct. 29, but was suspended on Nov. 4 due to a problem with a guide pipe for sending a measuring device into the reactor. After the problem was fixed, the reactor was restarted again on Wednesday.
The three reactors at the Onagawa plant are of the same boiling water type as those at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, where the country’s worst nuclear accident was triggered by the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
Although the Onagawa reactors were hit by a 13-meter tsunami at the time, they were brought to a state of cold shutdown thanks to external power sources.
Aiming to restart the Onagawa reactors after the disaster, Tohoku Electric spent a total of 570 billion yen to enhance safety measures, including increasing the quake resistance of buildings and raising the height of seawalls.
The Onagawa No. 2 reactor became the first reactor in eastern Japan, and also the first boiling water reactor in the country, to be restarted since the 2011 disaster.
“We consider this restart as a ‘re-commissioning’ (of the Onagawa plant),” Tohoku Electric President Kojiro Higuchi said in a statement Friday. “We will continue to further strengthen the safety of our nuclear power station,” he added.
JIJI Press